Sunley House (Former Barclays Bank)

Former Barclays Bank, now in mixed commercial use, built 1956-60 to designs by Sir William Graham Holford (1907-1975), with late 20th-century alterations.

Construction and Materials

The building has a reinforced concrete frame clad with panels of black two-inch bricks made by High Brooms Brick and Tile Company of Southborough, Kent, combined with Canterbury knapped flint and Portland stone dressings. It sits on a plinth of Belgian Fossil marble. Ground-floor windows are timber-framed, while the original external doors and upper-floor windows are bronze.

Layout

The plan is a narrow, slightly wedge-shaped rectangle with its long elevations facing north and south. The principal stair tower is positioned to the east, with a secondary stair to the west. The ground floor is open-plan. On the first, second and third floors, rooms open off a corridor running east to west along the north side.

Exterior

The building rises four storeys above a basement and has a flat roof, with a small attic storey at the far west end. It presents three public-facing elevations: to the north, south and west.

North Elevation

This elevation has nine bays. Bays two and eight (counting from left to right) are emphasised in stone. At first, second and third-floor levels, the windows in these bays are separated by panels of knapped flint and project very slightly as shallow oriels over the ground-floor openings below. These bays originally housed the principal entrance doors. A door, though not original, remains in the second bay, while the eighth bay door has been replaced with a window. Relief carvings of the Barclays griffin logo survive above both openings.

Above ground level, the remaining bays are defined by a slender stone grid infilled with square brick panels that mark the floor levels. At the far east and west ends, the exposed grid terminates with vertical strips of decorative 'quoining'.

At ground level, the windows are separated by plain columns of Issogne green marble, flanked on each side by quadrant-shaped recesses lined with ribbed bronze sheet. Spotlights embedded at the top of these recesses cast light downwards beside each window. Beneath the ground-floor windows there were originally panels of knapped flint, but these have been removed. Historic photographs suggest that the door in bay one may be the original door from bay two, and that bay one originally had a window at ground level.

South Elevation

The south elevation follows a similar arrangement to the north, but here bays two and nine are expressed in stone, with the stone borders infilled with knapped flint. Above ground floor, these bays have five horizontal rows of three small square windows, marking the internal locations of the stairwells. Figurative carvings appear above the ground-floor openings in both bays.

At ground level, large panelled bronze doors are set in bays one and nine, with a timber door in bay two. The doors in bays one and nine appear original to the building, though bay one originally had a window at ground level, suggesting this door was moved from bay two. The windows in bays seven and eight have been converted to doors.

West Elevation

This single-bay-wide elevation has landscape windows at first and second-floor levels, which project and rest on three plain triangular corbels. The ground floor is blind, with decorative panels of flint 'quoining'.

The ground-floor corners of the building are cut back, and four carved stone coins adorn the stone recesses. These depict: the reverse of a halfpenny showing a ship dated 1962; the reverse of a farthing showing a wren dated 1956; the obverse of a twenty shilling (pound) coin with a bust of Charles I; and the reverse of a ten shilling coin (an 'Angel' coin) showing St Michael slaying the serpent, also from Charles I's reign.

At third-floor level the building steps inward at the centre to create a balcony. Above this is a small attic storey with a pierced stone screen to which a flagpole is attached.

Interior

The original banking hall interior does not survive, and suspended ceilings have been installed throughout. The original layout of the upper floors is not known, though planning records suggest the third floor was originally a caretaker's flat. However, the principal and secondary stairs remain largely unaltered.

The stylish principal stair has an open well. The stairs and landings are floored in white marble with black marble applied to the exposed edges. Paired black metal stick balusters, each ringed with a bright brass band, support a rounded hardwood handrail. To the south, the stairwell wall is lined in black marble. At second and third-floor levels, the north, east and west walls are lined with narrow hardwood strip panelling that is slightly concave in section. The secondary stair shares similar design elements but is considerably more modest in size and materials.

History

Sunley House was designed in the late 1950s by Sir William Graham Holford (1907-1975) as a local head office for Barclays Bank. The site had previously been occupied by five buildings forming the west end of Middle Row. The building opened in 1960 but ceased operating as a bank in the mid-1990s.

Holford was born in South Africa but came to Liverpool University to study architecture in 1925. He established practice as an architect and town planner in 1933, and later became Lever Professor of Civic Design at Liverpool. During the Second World War, he supervised a team designing and constructing munitions workers' hostels for the Ministry of Works and became principal adviser to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, established in 1943.

Holford was involved in drafting the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, the forerunner of planning law in Britain. With Charles Holden, he acted as planning consultant to the City of London, putting forward proposals for the long-term redevelopment of the city. He also served as planning consultant to the University of Liverpool, Exeter University and Cambridgeshire County Council, and as architect to Corby New Town Development Corporation. His international work included plans for Pretoria and Durban in South Africa, and Canberra, Australia.

One obituary referred to Holford as 'the father of town planning as practised today'. In recognition of his contribution to the profession, he was knighted in 1953 and made a life peer in 1965. Despite not always attracting critical acclaim, he remains a key figure in town planning whose influence helped shape the major redevelopment of towns and cities in the post-war period.

Although Holford was involved in a great number of planning schemes, much of this work was undertaken by his firm, Holford Associates, with Holford's own involvement being more concerned with architectural policy than actual design. Sunley House is one of the few examples of Holford's personal work, revealing a skill for pattern and texture and a true regard for place.

The building conforms to no single particular style. Though unquestionably a piece of modern architecture, it uses traditional building materials and subtle historicist references to create an aesthetic that is both idiosyncratic and contextual. Holford's use of pattern and materials allows the building to make a bold and modern contribution to the streetscape without losing the human scale of detailing and texture.